Thursday, November 29, 2007

Through absolutely no intention on my part, I seem to have recorded quite a few records this season called The Sound of Christmas or Sounds of Christmas. It's a little disconcerting because I didn't even notice it until someone pointed it out to me in the comments. But I'm not one to look a gift trend in the mouth, so here is yet another LP in that same tradition. But first, a little setup. The Medallion label, an arm of Kapp, seemed to be the equivalent of RCA's Living Stereo. Well, maybe not the equivalent, but something similar. A place to showcase high fidelity stereo recordings using state-of-the-art recording methods and sparing no expense in the production and packaging of the resultant records. I've not seen too many records in this series, and was surprised when I found this Christmas contribution. You'll be impressed by the great recording of both the orchestra and the chorus, as well as the interesting arrangements of lots and lots of old chestnuts, bunched together in medley form. I'm a little surprised to have never heard of this recording before, and there's precious little info on the internet. So add this one to your pile of great lost Christmas records. Please download The Medallion Orchestra And Chorus, Directed By John Paul Krance-The Sound Of Christmas-Deck The Halls (Medallion (Kapp) MS-7512, 1960). Please leave me a comment if you can shed any light on the history of this recording. I suppose that holds true for all of my shares, but sometimes I just like to emphasize it...

Aiee! This is the third potential share you've beat me to the blog with. Though I think I have a different cover for this--I'll check.

The other two are the Three Suns LP, which I have in stereo (and which I'll gladly trade for any LM 78s you may possess) and the Norman Luboff TV special, which I found a couple months ago at a local Goodwill. I thought it was especially neat. And up it popped on your page.

Nobody outdraws Ernie in the blogging game (he wrote, using an awkward metaphor).

I have a terrific LP of silent-movie-related music on the same label. Yes, they really designed the things for snob appeal. For the discriminating LP collector, who deserved better stereo-channel separation than the average buyer.

As a kid we had 2 each of the boy and girl candles as shown on the front of that LP cover. The girl's robe had blue bows and bottoms. My Dad still puts them out on his mantle every year. They've never been lit in over 40 years. I think Woolworth's sold them back then.

I've seen those little candles somewhere. I know there's a credit in the gatefold about the artist who took the picture. I'm sure there was a lot of pressure on the artist to get the shot before their heads melted...

Got Vinyl?

Ernie's Christmas record want list. There might be something in that stack of Christmas records you want to throw out that I need. Actually, there's a lot more that I need that I don't know about, so send 'em all to me (especially singles)! (Revised 03 March 2018)